Today’s guest is 14-year veteran entrepreneur, Justin Christianson. After selling his previous business to his partners he began consulting and eventually created Conversion Fanatics, an SEO agency.

Justin happens to also be a client of mine and is seeing some really great results with his outbound efforts. I invited him on the show to share his story, outbound strategy and the cool, old-school tactic that’s getting a up to a massive 25% response rate! Check it out…

Defining Your Market is Crucial

Justin says, at first they were completely non-selective about who they would work for – targeting just about anyone and everyone. But rule #1 when you work with me is to get super specific about who you target… Justin is glad he listened.

To define their target, Conversion Fanatics looked back at their success stories. They discovered patterns and consistencies among their best projects and used that information to create a customer avatar. They define their ideal client based on average spend and traffic type.

Now that they know who they are marketing to, they can really drill down and become a leader in a specific niche.

Justin says they did a ton of research to figure out how to get through to their ideal clients. They want to understand the issues, struggles and pain points of their prospects. They gathered this information in the form of formal surveys and data gathering, along with informal conversations, then use this in their marketing and when speaking to new leads.

Why Outbound is Essential

Cold traffic can be the hardest of the 3 Types of Traffic to go after, but for Conversion Fanatics it’s been critical to their success. In fact, 70% of their marketing is cold outreach. But they’re being smart about it by batching their efforts, and being very selective about who they target.

One Old-School Outbound Tactic

Most of their outbound campaigns are direct mail. YES postal mail – the kind the mailman delivers. They also weave-in custom emails and PURLs (personalized URLs) as well.

They do a ton of research first and get really specific about who they target. Their market is bigger companies with $30+million in revenue so they goal is to stay top of mind for when the time is right.

The direct mail piece is letter from Justin personally. It has customized information about the prospect’s website, issues he sees and opportunities for improvement. It’s short and to the point. And most importantly – it’s not a form letter!

4 Steps to Successful Direct Mail

Provide massive value. Establish credibility by being helpful. Don’t ask for a sale right away. Set-up yourself as the authority.

Be specific. Use headlines that ask ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions that are very specific to a problem or issues they face.

Don’t mass mail. Control the process by focusing your efforts on a small group of prospects. Send small batches.

Have a contingency plan. Justin says his outbound strategy is a lot of work and takes 10-12 touches in order to be effective – but it’s worth every bit of the time and effort it takes. However, unresponsive prospects get a free copy of Justin’s published book. This is helpful, valuable and reinforces his credibility and authority in the industry.

Other tactics Justin is using: plain text emails and PURLs. Just like the hard copy direct mail, he keeps emails personal, short and sweet, with a writing style that is friendly and familiar (not all cheesy, sales-guy style).

And when you get cold traffic to the proposal stage, support our sponsor, Qwirl.